Budget hiked to make nine cities slum-free in Hry

The Haryana government on Thursday hiked the budget allocation of urban local bodies for the year 2013-14 to Rs 1,867 crore, on Plan side for the project, to make nine cities of the state slum-free under Rajiv Awas Yojana.

chandigarhUpdated: Mar 07, 2013 18:14 IST

HT Correspondent Hindustan Times

The Haryana government on Thursday hiked the budget allocation of urban local bodies for the year 2013-14 to Rs 1,867 crore, on Plan side for the project, to make nine cities of the state slum-free under Rajiv Awas Yojana.

An official release said on Thursday that the Central government had allocated Rs 16.86 crore to make nine cities - Gurgaon, Faridabad, Karnal, Panchkula, Rohtak, Panipat, Ambala, Yamunanagar and Hisar, slum-free. He said that a sum of Rs 1.51 crore had already been released for conducting the survey for the purpose. A provision of Rs 50.99 crore had been made for 2013-14 for implementation of the scheme.

The Rajiv Gandhi Urban Development Mission (RGUDMH) was launched for beefing up urban infrastructure in mission mode approach in all the urban local bodies of the state.

He said that under the mission, a revised budgetary allocation of Rs 542.7 crore was made for 2012-13, out of which Rs 366.26 crore had already been released to the municipalities for various urban development activities.

The state government proposed an allocation of Rs 624.11 crore in the Budget for 2013-14. With a view to augment the resources of civic bodies, it had been decided under the new excise policy to enhance the allocation for local bodies from Rs 5 per bottle to Rs 7 per bottle of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL), Rs 3 per bottle to Rs 5 per bottle of country made liquor and Rs 2 per bottle to Rs 3 per bottle of beer. This would increase the devolution of urban local bodies by Rs 51 crore, he said.